Essential Social Media Marketing Guide for Getting More Value From Your Social Media Marketing Efforts

You’re definitely not alone. Most entrepreneurs like you are overwhelmed by their business anyway. Period. You have a full workload. Trying to learn and apply everything plus adding social media to the mix is often the push that sends you over the edge.

So you can probably relate.

This post is going to help you get as much value as you can from your social media marketing efforts.

If you’re trying to manage Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and YouTube and BetterNetworker and Google Plus AND keep up-to-date with your blog, it’s likely you’re heading for a massive tailspin — if you haven’t already.

If you’re struggling to manage and/or get more value from your social media marketing efforts, you’re likely spreading yourself too thin, making the wrong priorities, and don’t have the necessary pre-requisite marketing pieces in place.

This is a quick list you mustn’t ignore. Doing so will only jeopardize your ability to ever tap social media’s full potential to aid in the growth of your business. Ignoring this list will keep you in a constant tailspin until you eventually crash and burn, and are no longer working on the intentional design of your desires, dreams and goals. Ignore this at your own peril.

You Must Have a Marketing Funnel

By now you’ve probably heard more and more people using the phrase “Marketing Funnel” when talking about marketing your business online.

Here’s what it means to create a marketing funnel using the internet.

By the way, this doesn’t just apply to your network marketing business or your affiliate products. It applies to marketing anything online (offline too).

It is a vital principle of the marketing process, and without it you won’t get squat from your social media efforts. You will be an un-leveraged mess without a marketing funnel.

The idea isn’t to be a master with social media (read that three times). Social media is a tool that is only as good as you use it in conjunction with your marketing funnel. The idea is to become a master marketer, and perfect the process of creating highly converting marketing funnels. (read that three times).

When you learn how to create a marketing funnel, you will be learning a skill that will benefit you for the rest of your life. Furthermore, you will be able to teach (and profit from the teaching) your team or group how to create a marketing funnel. It’s THAT valuable of a skill.

Okay, so let’s simply answer the question, What is a marketing funnel using the internet?

A marketing funnel is simply a series of congruent steps that lead and convert a specific type of prospect (your target market) who is actively searching for a solution to a specific problem, need or want they have into a paying customer, client, business partner or otherwise.

Generally the funnel starts with a point of contact. This could be several several different things, but ultimately the first step in the process is when you collect your prospect’s information (thus building your list) so that you are given permission to follow up by email, phone or direct mail over time to establish a trust relationship and create a long term marketing asset.

The end result of a successful marketing (bottom of the funnel) are sales in the form of collecting commissions with various products, services and back ending your primary network marketing business.

Check out this Marketing Funnel visual aid. Your task is to have a marketing funnel in place so that as you network at the social media platforms, you always have a plan for directing your leads and prospects.

This illustration demonstrates how to create a business that is centered around YOU so that you have complete control over it, and is structured for you to make as much money as possible. This is how to develop your own business assets. It doesn't happen over-night. Not hardly. But you can leverage other systems that are built this way, and little by little, replace the system your using with your own - one piece at a time. Ann talks more about that here in this blog post: http://www.therenegadeblog .com/the-renegade-system and throughout her ongoing Renegade Network Marketer series. How many of you have gotten started with something similar to this content funnel diagram?

You Must Find Your Own Minimum Effective Dose For Each Social Media Platform

In a nutshell, your goal is NOT to load yourself up with a bunch of social media “stuff” to do every day. Nope. Your goal is to find the threshold where all you do is the minimum required while still achieving maximum results. For example, I spell out the exact 7 Steps to Create and Promote Your Facebook Business Page. Not much more, and nothing less. It’s our minimum effective dose.

Your task is to predetermine the specific tasks you’re going to employ to reach the minimum effective dose for each of the social networks you plan to have a presence upon. Find that “sweet spot” where you’re doing the minimum amount necessary to reach maximum results.

Similar yet distinctly different from above, you must determine which social networks you’re going to have a presence and market yourself, your business and products, etc. and those you’re not.

Ask yourself what social media outlet or outlets, if there’s more than one, will give you the biggest returns?

When I refer to “returns” I mean the highest levels of engagement and community; more one-on-one experiences, and more “touches” with your audience.

That might just mean Facebook and Facebook only. Or it might mean you focus on Twitter and YouTube. You just really need to know your audience and where they’re spending their time, and also where you feel the most comfortable.

There isn’t a “right way” or “wrong way” with this one.

Time is also a factor you must consider. How much time can you commit to these different social sites? Here’s a tip, when you decide on this, give it your full attention and make it a habit by committing to consistency for a given time period.

Let’s say you only have 10 minutes in the morning to spend on Facebook. That’s fine. Just be sure to shut off your phone, don’t look at email, keep your to-do list out of your face, and put your full attention into connecting on Facebook — listening and reading what they have to say, and really focusing on what you’re doing right then and there. Don’t multi-task.

If you can do this then that 10 minutes is going to be much more valuable than any amount of hours you might be spending on social media unfocused. If you can give your full attention to just a little bit of time versus half of your attention to a lot of time, you’re going to create a much richer experience.

You Must Have a Plan For Creating and Adding Content To Your Marketing

It’s crucial that you learn to regularly create and share your content. Understand that all searches are queries for information. So essentially, you’re in the information creating business.

Here is a great resource that will help you in the area of content creation that returns “quick money” into your pocket right now…

We highly recommend Mark Hoverson’s Irresistible Info Marketing Blueprint as it will show you how to create a quick product based upon the expertise you already have. Creating a product will help you earn up front “now money” that serves to help fund your business immediately, and simultaneously catapult you to the next step of business growth and leadership.

If I had to give you something to measure how you go about creating content, I’d simply say, “Be useful first, then learn to be ‘brief,’ but don’t sacrifice useful for brief.” More than anything else, just be consistent.

The more often you can make your content useful, the better it will be received. For example, if you find this blog post useful, it’s likely to get recurring traffic for a long time to come. That’s a good thing!

So be sure to write something that people can use for quite a long time.

One way to force yourself to create compelling and useful content over a period of time is to commit yourself to creating a series. If, for instance, you commit to a new video book review each month, then you’ve got 12 of your blog posts spoken for in the coming months. A series is a great way to get your head into creating a lot in a row.

Lastly, You Must Be Generating Leads

Don’t rely on social media to generate leads for you. It can. Do all of the aforementioned and it likely will, but don’t count on it.

Instead, we recommend that you send the leads that you generate INTO your social media platforms to stimulate social proof, familiarity, connection and bonding to you.

This goes along with having a marketing funnel, which we discussed above.

When you have created a marketing funnel, you have your foundation built to collect leads, and you will want to test the effectiveness of that marketing funnel. There is no better way to test the effectiveness of your marketing funnel than with paid advertising such as pay per click with Google, Youtube or Facebook. There are countless numbers of other ways to pay to have traffic directed to your marketing funnel.

Social media isn’t one of them. It’s not immediate enough. Social media is NOT a lead generating activity. It’s a networking activity. It’s an activity to build relationships and to stay in front of your audience thus gaining more exposure.

When you are generating your own leads, building your list, and emailing them you can send them into your blog, or Facebook or Youtube to get to know those leads better so that they know you, like you and trust you, which is the foundation for better business, more sales, increased lifetime value of your customers and ultimately, you’re creating a very important bond.

It’s also great social proof. When you generate a lead, and they’re not really sure who you are yet, and you can send them an email to a video of you on your blog, they’re instantly ten times more bonded to you than if you just continue to send cold emails that try to sell things, or get them into your deal.

Social media allows you to make your list a virtual warm market, and if you’re already generating leads this becomes an ever expanding cycle that will grow exponentially.

Social media is a powerful, powerful thing. Use it correctly by abiding by this list to get more value from your social media marketing efforts.

Got Questions About Getting More Value From Your Social Media Marketing Efforts?

Hi I’m Eric Walker, and I’m the social marketing manager here at 80/20 Marketing Inc. My responsibility is to work directly with Ann, and our entire 80/20 Marketing team to ensure that we’re reaching our social media marketing goals, and that they coordinate with our current marketing funnels. I do other stuff too, but that’s my main objective.

We feel strongly that social media isn’t going away, and that it can be an integral part of building a network marketing business. We also feel that social media is a perfect tool to go between online to offline (and back again) business building. Ultimately, that’s where we’re heading with our use of social media to build 80/20 Marketing Inc.

But that’s only the half of it. We’re deeply committed to educating you about how to use social media to build your business the way we are. You will see more blog posts, training and even webinars to help you succeed in this area. This guide will serve you as an ideal starting point and give you practical food for thought about how to get the most value from your social media marketing activities.

We’ll be using this post as a “base camp” for answering all your social media marketing questions. You can refer other people to it. I’ll be following up with your questions in the comments area. So please ask your questions and leave your thoughts in the comments area below.

About Eric Walker

Eric is an 80/20 Marketing staff member and marketing collaborator. He spends his days writing content and copy for a marketing purpose. Eric is an optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together.
If you have a question, and/or would like to communicate with Eric directly, email Eric@8020MarketingInc.com

Comments

You have a totally “sane” approach to virtually every topic that you cover. It is helpful and much appreciated. Social networking is different from online business networking, and many people fail
to approach the two differently. BIG mistake. With social networking, you must be percieved as a trusted “friend” before anyone will care about what you “do”. With online business networking(LinkedIn, Biznik etc.), you must be perceived as someone who has more value than the next person.
Thanks for a useful post!

I agree. Most first time bloggers spend too much time doing what they are familiar with and feel “safe” doing. Many people get stuck at on facebook refreshing away. I can say for myself I spend too much time making my website look good because that’s my expertise. I would get better value netoworking and getting the word out, so people actually see it!!

What makes or breaks a website is the amount of time networked outside their circle of influence and the creation of original content.

Those in your social media circles already know who you are, so it’s important to introduce yourself and spread the word about your website and blog by creating awesome original content, becoming known on other popular websites and forums, and creating backlinks.

The goal is to create more new people coming into your website to start the marketing funnel, and in the meantime if your are giving value, they will “like”, “follow” or +1 you to their circle! 2 birds with 1 stone!!

What a super post Eric!
it does take time and effort to get to the point to even understand this post
and what it’s saying.
As a 55 year young guy discarded from the job market at 51 I have
learned this the hard way.
Simply failing forward and tweeking and learning and failing forward.
Yes all of what you say TAKES TIME.
Right now today I have launched my brand new home online.
I Practisied for two years with 2 WP blogs and now it’s time to launch this beauty.
My web guy builds amazing blogs.
Have a look at my new home.
Now today is the first day of my seoboomerguy blog.
Thanks for the great content Eric.

I really cannot speak my mind on a public post. I have spent a lot of money trying this and trying that
and nothing seems to work.. I am a bit skeptical about trying out anything or trusting anyone anymore.
I really plan to read all of the bog – I printed it out and hopefully will learn from it.
Best of Luck

It pays to be skeptical and investigate things. Many people get lured or entrapped into into buying those amazing programs that promise you the world and deliver a receipt for payment. You could have given that money to your local church or charity for tax write off. I have read, as time permits, some of Ann’s work and she is very knowledgeable. At the same time I questioned why I never read it more often. Read as much of her blog as possible. Learn from it and yes keep your money in your bank account until you decide something is right for you. Keep learning. Knowledge is key in this business and will keep you from going broke. There is lots of free information out there from great people. .

Trackbacks

[…] Eric Walker gives some critical advice about using social media in a article on The Renegade Blog He has some some simple tips that will help you in getting value when using social media to help build your business. […]